More Conventional Thinking

Some thoughts on the GOP convention the past couple of nights:

(Wednesday 9-1-04)

• Massachusettes Governor Milt Romney:
I had to admit, he had a pretty good line with- "I don’t want Presidential leadership that comes in 57 varieties!" Get it? Because John Kerry's wife is the widow of John Heinz, and Heinz ketchup comes in 57... oh, well you get the picture. (Although, come to think of it, I think I've only ever tasted one variety of Heinz ketchup.)

Unfortunately, I was drinking from a glass of water later in the speech when he said :"We step forward by insisting on Ronald Reagan’s vision of a compassionate and fiscally conservative government..."
Just as he said "fiscally conservative government" I did a big spit-take and all the water that was in my mouth went spraying across the room.
I'm mentally working on a post to explain how absurd this is, to show how the Dubya administration has been the most fiscally liberal administration in recent history, perhaps in all history. Even over and above military spending and homeland security, discretionary (non-Social Security and Medicare) spending has been higher under Bush than under Clinton.

He has never once vetoed a spending bill.
Or any other kind of bill.
(No president in 185 years has gone a full term without one veto.)

Pork projects abound, including:
• $750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska
• $400,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute
• $30 million for technical assistance to help religious groups learn how to apply for government money
• $62 million to promote the Sacajawea dollar coin

Combine all that (and billions more) with huge tax cuts for rich people, then you get the record deficits that we and our grandchildren get to enjoy for years to come.

To be fair, the line-item veto was ruled unconstitutional in 1998, and the President may have had to allow some of the more absurd expenditures in order to pay for things he felt were more truly necessary. The fact is, though, these bills and hundreds more like them are coming out of a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by a Republican president. The Republican Party under current leadership can make no serious claim as the party of smaller government and fiscally conservative policy.

We will revisit this issue during "Debt Week" coming very soon.

• Georgia Senator Zell Miller:
This guy seemed completely insane to me, but it was certainly mesmerizing in a morbidly fascinating way. I watched him later that night with Chris Matthews on "Hardball" and he got so riled up that he seemed to challenge Matthews to a duel.
His speech made me wonder how a guy who stands on the same stage in 1992 and gives the keynote address for his own party's candidate manages to flip-flop so far to the right with so much virulence and loathing for Democrats.
As he was ravaging Kerry for voting against a laundry list of weapons programs, I wondered if he was paying attentionback in the day when even the hawkish then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said these words:

"We have to get on with the business of cutting…We have to cut out those things we don't need. We have to cut out those things that we can do without in the military area, that we can do without in terms of the complex that is the Department of Defense…Over the course of the last year, since I've been Secretary, I've recommended terminating, canceling, shutting down 20 separate weapons programs." - Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, 4/30/90

"The F-14B, of course, we're terminating in '90. There's no new money in it for '91. The AHIP, the Phoenix missile, the F-15 aircraft, et cetera -- all of those are being terminated in '91…The Apache helicopter, of course, ends in '91. The M1 tank, we're proposing to shut down the M1 tank production lines in '91.” - Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, 2/1/90

Defense Secretary Cheney tried "to reduce active-duty troop strength" from 2.2 million to 1.6 million while making "deep cuts in the Reserves and National Guard." - NY Times, 8/4/91

"If President Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1 special pleader in town…The president has to reach out and take a whack at everything to be credible [meaning] you've got to hit defense." - U.S. Rep. Dick Cheney, 12/16/84  (Center for American Progress, Claim v. Fact Database)

• VP Dick Cheney-
Zell was a tough act to follow, especially for the VP, who truly is more a Washington technocrat than a born politician. He always seems sort of uncomfortable in his own skin, talks through sort of a pinched mouth and never raises him arms much above his shoulders. (This may be because of intense angina.)
He kept with the theme of the week and referred to Sept 11th eight hundred times and made the 437th specific reference to President Bush on the rubble with the bullhorn at Ground Zero.

One thing I will say in Dick Cheney's defense: Many consider him a soulless neoconservative who lives in the center of the earth, tirelessly working on a death-ray that will emerge from his volcano laboratory to wreck havok on all who would cross him.
Last week, though, he showed a rare revealing tenderness on a visit to Davenport, IA. He was asked about his thoughts on President's Bush's desire to amend the U.S. Constitution of ban same-sex marriage, and had this to say:

"Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with. . . . With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People . . . ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."

When I first heard this (and after I got back up into my chair) I thought- "Man, just when you think you know somebody."

Such a thoughtful and loving gift to give to his daughter: a public affirmation of an important part of who she is, and one that probably was met with a fair bit of scolding back at the White House by Karl Rove and the rest of the powers-that-be.

It's the sort of moment that makes you understand prejudice, the way it's so much harder to hate someone for stupid reasons when there's an actual human being involved that you get to know and might actually like for who they are.

Most people who want to dictate what rights gays shoud or shouldn't have don't really KNOW any gays (or maybe just don't THINK they know any gays.) Allowing gays to marry each other would ruin the institution of marriage just about as much as the civil rights movement ruined the institutions of lunch counters, drinking fountains and bus front-seats.

(Thursday 9-2-04)

• President George W. Bush:

I have to admit I fell asleep towards the end of this one, but here are my notes:

(...more 9-11, more rubble)

-" I am running with a compassionate conservative philosophy: that government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives..."
(Unless they are gay, or are living where my buddies want to drill for oil, or desire medical marijuana, or have terminal cancer and are looking for a compassionate way out.)

-"To create jobs my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending..."
(When does this start, exactly? [see above])

-.."reducing regulation.... " (i.e.- "increasing pollution")

"To create jobs, we will expand trade and level the playing field..." (i.e.- "apply trade tariffs")

"I will ensure every poor county in America has a community or rural health center..."
"So we will double the number of people served by our principal job training program and increase funding for our community colleges."
(Great ideas! How do we pay for all of this again? Oh, yeah, with tax cuts!)

"In an ownership society, more people will own their health care plans and have the confidence of owning a piece of their retirement. We'll always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers. With the huge baby boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg you can call your own, and government can never take away."

Watch this closely--His plan to privatize Social Security will be mind-bogglingly expensive, unless accompanied by politically-dangerous benefit reductions or tax increases. Download THIS FILE to learn more.

"His taxes - his policies of tax and spend, of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity, are the politics of the past."
Once again- there's what Bush says, and then there's what Bush does.

Writes the (conservative think-tank) Cato Institute's Doug Bandow in a cover story in the American Conservative magazine: "Despite occasional exceptions, the Bush administration, backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, has been promoting larger government at almost every turn.Its spending policies have been irresponsible, and its trade strategies have been destructive. The president has been quite willing to sell out the national interest for perceived political gain, whether the votes sought are from seniors or farmers."

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas agrees: "The unfortunate truth is that the Bush administration, aided by a Republican Congress, has increased spending more in three years than the previous administration did in eight. Federal spending has grown by more than 25 percent since President Bush took office."

-- That's about when I fell asleep.

Now is the time to stay awake, though.
Be vigilant and learn. Don't rely completely on network or cable news to tell you what's going on. If a candidate says something that sounds far-fetched, Google it and figure it out for yourself!

Up Next: Jobs, a Labor Day Special!

Comments

[Tom]

Rob,

I've read and enjoyed your comments and analysis of the conventions. I look forward to any comments you have regarding the recent comments in Iowa made by the VP. You know, the ones that would make any future attack the fault of all of us if we happen to vote for the wrong candidate...........

Take care,

TCH